


Call It Love

by LetThereBeDestiel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Christmas, Christmas fic, Love Confessions, M/M, Pets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-05
Updated: 2018-01-05
Packaged: 2019-02-25 19:40:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13219830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetThereBeDestiel/pseuds/LetThereBeDestiel
Summary: Prompt: "I swear to God if one more person asks me for permission to ask you out I'm gonna kiss you right in front of them"





	Call It Love

One of the few living creatures that Castiel truly loved was a coal-black cat with eyes the color of honey and gold.

It was a recluse, grumpy and irritable animal – just like Castiel himself, as he’d occasionally recite in Dean’s ears. His best friend would smile, admitting the truth, and adding a word:

“But still loveable.”

Or:

“Yeah, just like you – snarly, yet adorable.”

Dean and Castiel had been best friends in the past four years, since the winter of eighth grade. Saying Cas was a loner was an understatement – and that’s why Dean felt incredibly lucky - most of the time - to spend the whole of high school next to him.

There was no one else for either of them in the friends department – and the whole Juniors grade knew it.

Anyway, there was one thing Castiel loved more than anything in his life, and that was Waddles, his grumpy furball. His second favorite was Dean.

Dean, who was the first person he saw at the schoolgate every morning, and the last person he texted goodnight. The person who had happened to be across the street four Christmases ago, walking his brother’s dog, when he saw his classmate-slash-neighbor sprawled flat in his front yard, talking to something beneath the stairs which Dean couldn’t see.

This wouldn’t have been a particularly upsetting scene if the hour wasn’t close to midnight, and the ground wasn’t covered in 12-inches snow. In those circumstances, the dubious neighbor would be achingly freezing in no time – he was wearing thick pajamas and dotted socks, with no coat.

Dean was pretty sure there had to be something real special under those stairs for the guy to be willing to sacrifice the strength of his immune system like that.

He shuffled closer in the snow, trying to get a better look at the scene.

“Hello?” He mumbled at the neighbor’s gate. There was no reply.

“Do you need help, maybe?” He tried again, sniffling in the cold. His dog moved restlessly around him, sniffing the ground.

Neighbor-person finally turned an elbow in a ninety-degree angle to look at Dean, frowning.

“Please get your dog away from here.”

Dean raised his eyebrows, about to mutter an, ‘excuse me?’ when he realized he was on the guy’s property.

“Eh, sure,” he mumbled instead and took a few steps back. The boy turned back and whispered something to the stairs.

“C’mon, Adam,” Dean said to the dog and pulled his leash. They walked away.

A lot of things would have been different if he’d just kept walking. He glanced back, though, and saw the boy standing up – his feet piercing into the snow, his arms cradling something close to his chest.

Dean slowed down, trying to figure out what was the boy holding.

“Sorry about that,” the boy said then – he’d caught Dean staring. Dean took a step toward him.

“Please, don’t come any closer,” the guy rushed to say, keeping a cautious eye on Adam. The tiny bundle in his arms meowed.

A cat.

It was a cat.

“Oh,” Dean said, brilliantly. He examined the supposed cat (no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t see any cat). They boy examined him. Adam swayed around uncomfortably.

“Anyway, um, I better go,” he said eventually. He wasn’t sure what he was anyway-ing – no real conversation had occurred between them. He turned away a second time, but before he could go, he was interrupted.

“Can I ask a favor?”

“What?” He asked out of instinct.

The boy was trembling now. The snow almost reached his knees. His socks would be soaked wet by now, in the better case, but he didn’t seem distraught by the cold.

“We don’t have any cat food, and we’re out of milk,” he said, raising a shoulder. “I know you live just across the road…”

“I’ll get you some,” Dean nodded, not knowing exactly why he just agreed to go out again in the freezing weather. Something in the boy's dauntless effort in face of the cold made whatever inconvenience Dean felt seem smaller. 

Yeah, if the guy bothered to sink full-body into the snow for some invisible furball, he could spare another moment to help. 

The boy finally turned away and Dean hurried across the road and into his own house, relieved to finally end a conversation that relied on him making a fool of himself, even if he was gonna start another one of those in just a few minutes.

 

* * *

 

Dean stood in a corner of the kitchen and watched the small cat being nourished.

He didn’t really know what to do with himself after having brought the milk over – having to go through the living room and mumble an awkward “hi” to five family members on his way to the kitchen – and nobody had shown him out, so he leaned against the cream-colored wall and waited for the tiny black creature to finish drinking from a baby bottle full of milk.

“Do you want a Christmas cookie?” The boy asked, his tone indifferent. His right hand was propping the bottle, and he didn’t look at Dean when he spoke.

“A what?” Dean asked, pulling himself from his thoughts.

Without a word, the guy reached out and shoved a plate of cookies toward Dean, his eyes on the cat the whole time.

“They taste like Christmas,” he said in the same informative tone.

Dean grabbed a cookie from the plate and took a bite. “Thanks,” he mumbled. There was no answer.

“So, um, what’s your name?” He asked after a few silent seconds.

“Castiel,” the boy replied. The kitten has finally stopped drinking, and Castiel put the bottle away.

“I’m Dean,” Dean awkwardly mentioned.

“I know.”

Right. They had a couple of classes together. 

On the dining table, the kitten struggled to free itself from its blanket. With what seemed like mostly willpower and little capability, it stood up and started tottering around.

Castiel watched the kitten. Dean watched Castiel. And for the first time that evening, Dean saw the guy smile.

“I’ll call him Waddles,” he asserted. “Because he waddles.”

Dean didn’t know what to say to that.

Finally, the boy turned to look at him.

“You probably want to go back to your family,” he said, and relief washed over Dean. “I’m sorry for taking up of your time on a Christmas night.”

“We don’t really celebrate Christmas,” Dean said, and followed Castiel to the front door. “So, no problem. Glad I could help.”

Castiel opened the door, and Dean stepped outside. “See you around,” he said, about to turn around, but the boy grabbed his elbow.

“Thank you,” he said, his eyes vibrant with honesty.

“You’re welcome,” Dean said stiffly, startled by the sudden touch and the boy’s intense stare.

Castiel let go then, and Dean let out a smile.

“Good luck with your Waddles,” he said and went on his way.

Somehow, that night changed the way Castiel looked at a lot of things. That cup of milk meant to him more than Dean could ever realize; no one has ever been as kind as giving him a cup of milk before.

 

* * *

Four years had passed, and Dean was completely in love. 

There was no point in denying it to himself: Cas was his best friend - his quiet, socially awkward, absolutely bizarre best friend - and Dean admired him like Icarus admired the sun. 

There was a point, however, in denying it to everyone else. Because Dean knew exactly how Cas felt about dating, and those were not good feelings. 

See, Castiel was the first most isolated kid in his class, and as a result, Dean was the second. But that didn't make Cas any less popular among his classmates. It was an odd attraction that has become a myth: Castiel's solitude was taken as mysterious, almost dark, and added the placid way he carried himself and his good looks, he often fell victim to bad pickup lines and strangely dramatic love confessions.

Well, not him, exactly; because when Castiel picked up on his schoolmates’ habit of competing on that special place in his heart – a place that was reserved only for Waddles, according to Dean – he secluded himself even further away from mankind and unintentionally left Dean to deal with bold suitors.

And so every time someone had the thought of asking him out, instead of facing the surly and intimidating Castiel, they approached a kinder, ever-friendly Dean.

Dean always knew what to say. He’d force a smile, let out an “I’ll ask him” or “I’ll see what I can do” and embrace the relief that washed over him thirty minutes later, when Cas rolled his eyes and sighed the usual “you know what to do”, or, on luckier days, “why do you even bother to ask?”

“Gotta give ‘em a chance,” Dean would smile, and before he might have the chance to say something stupid – something he’d been trying to work up the courage to say for years, maybe – Cas would rest a hand on his elbow, and every time, like the first night they’d truly met, he would look Dean in the eye and utter a ‘thank you’ that seemed to have a meaning that only Cas understood.

And Dean would leave the room, the warm spark in his chest sizzling, happy to turn down another suitor.

 

Call it a hunch, or good observation, but Dean knew it was a Bold Suitor Day since the eight-o’clock class started.

“Think Hannah’s finally gonna crack,” he muttered as he flopped into his seat next to Cas’ that morning. Beside him, Cas looked up from his phone and took a peek at Hannah on the first row.

“No,” he determined, looking back into his phone. “It’s only been a week since April.”

“Wanna bet?” Dean offered, although rather cynically. His dog was sick, and he wasn’t in his usual good-natured mood. Except that, he was tired of people using him as a Tinder swipe feature.

“Ten dollars,” Cas mumbled, right before class started.

The day passed. Dean kept an aggravated eye on Hannah, spotting every occasional nervous glance toward him. By the end of the day, Dean was willing to bet a hundred bucks that she’d approach them before going home, and then go and use that money to buy a fly swatter and hit her with it.

Just as expected, not three minutes had passed since the last period ended before Hannah was up and heading their way through students and chairs. She stopped before Dean’s side of the table, hesitating with an apologetic smile.

Castiel, on his feet, and Dean, gathering his things from his seat, both stopped and looked at her.

“Hi,” she started with an embarrassed huff. “I just wanted to, uh…” Her eyes jumped to Cas’ face for a moment, then fixated on Dean’s.

“Just wanted to ask if, uh, maybe…”

Dean stared at her, trying to control himself. Of all the people who’d had the nerve to ask him for permission to date Cas – as if he was his mother – no one had ever done it with the guy standing right in front of them.

“You know,” Hannah finally said, smiling awkwardly again.

From the corner of his eye, Dean saw Cas stare at her with, his shocked expression mirroring Dean’s.

Dean was about to clear his throat and answer her politely, he swore it. He was just gonna stand up, so that she would understand it was a standing-up-from-your-chair matter. He was just gonna tell her politely that Cas was standing right there.

Right _there._

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?” He heard himself blurt out. Cas touched his arm, opening his mouth to reply to the girl, but Dean pulled away and stopped him. “Oh, no,” he said, louder than he’d intended. “You’re not even looking at him! You know he’ll turn you down without thinking twice!” He pointed an accusing finger at Hannah. He felt he had no control over his voice; the wrong side of his brain took his words hostage, and it was spelling them in dangerous combinations.

“Dean,” Cas interrupted gently, knowing Dean well enough to recognize what was about to come. But Dean’s brain was doing as it pleased, and right now it pleased to see Dean embarrass himself.

“Don’t even get me started on you!” He turned to Cas, who frowned, no longer trying to touch him.

“No one is ever good enough for you! Girls, guys – I’ve had non-fuckin’-binary people asking me to ask you out. Will you actually say no to everyone? Is there even a point in anyone asking? Or should I just tell them no on the spot and save everyone trouble!”

He evened his breath for a few moments, his face red, eyes fixed on Cas' face. His brain finally shut down, and he didn’t know what to say to make up for the damage it’s done.

Cas gaped at him, taken aback. In his eyes was something else, something deeper – pain, probably. Hurt; or maybe… fear? He opened his mouth, before closing it and opening it again.

“I can’t,” he said tiredly.

Dean closed his mouth, and waited. His desperate eyes glued to Dean’s, Cas continued.

“You know how… difficult I am, alright? With people. I can’t imagine myself having an intimate relationship with someone I don’t know as well as I know the insides of my own brain.”

He raised a hand, as if wanting to cover his face, but let it drop halfway through.

“And that’s none of their fault, but mine.”

He finally let his eyes drop to the ground.

“So-“ Dean started, pausing to clear his throat. “So there’s no one you’d say yes to?”

Cas’ mouth twisted into a ridiculous expression that Dean knew, by now, was a very anxious attempt at a smile. He said,

“I can think of a name.”

They searched one another’s eyes, afraid to make a wrong move, and every other color in the room faded.

Dean’s mouth cracked into a tiny smile. “Please tell me that’s not Waddles.”

Cas’ lips pursed – a reaction to his successful attempt not to roll his eyes. “It’s about to become,” he said dryly, the tiniest smile shaping his lips upwards – and that’s all Dean needed to hear before he tugged on Cas’ shirt and pulled him into a kiss in front of who-knows-who that was still in the classroom.

Their lips pressed together for a few moments, dry and sweet and poorly-angled, before Dean pulled away and glanced around, finally very aware of his surroundings. To his relief, the classroom was completely empty – apart from one girl, still standing in front of their table, gaping at them disbelievingly.

She stared at them for a few moments more, as if trying to make them feel guilty. Then she closed her mouth with a _knock,_ blurted out an angry “wow” and left the room in a rush.

“Well, then,” Cas broke the silence after a moment. Dean’s lips curved into a smile, and Cas’ face couldn’t help but follow.

“Cas?” Dean asked.

“Yes?”

“I have a confession.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Go on.”

“I never liked cats. I only like Waddles because he reminds me of you.”

Cas looked at him with dead eyes. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” he said and left the room. Dean would have been worried, if not for the hand tugging on his and making sure that he followed. 

**Author's Note:**

> Credits:  
> Waddles' name and the [quote](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dXRXYlZF9M) that went with it are references to Gravity Falls.
> 
> The prompt was from tumblr (I think) and in any way wasn't mine, but I spent hours (literal hours) trying to find it again and just couldn't. Sorry.
> 
> Also, I can't make that annoying underscore go away. You know what I'm talking about. It's annoying the hell out of me.


End file.
